


The Tarleton Murders

by Violsva



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Murder, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Sherlock Holmes is Lonely, Victorian Attitudes, Whether He Realizes It Or Not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6990205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before my biographer had come to glorify me. They are not all successes, Watson. But there are some pretty little problems among them.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tarleton Murders

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in 2012, but not posted; it was edited with the help of consultingpiskies. It can be seen as backstory to The Adventure of the Resourceful Widow, but the stories aren't in any way dependent on each other.

A boy had to depend on his instincts in the world, Betty had told him, lips caked in scarlet and cigarette smoke following the words. He didn’t know Betty’s real name – when he’d asked Betty just laughed and said “Darling, Betty _is_ my real name, don’t you know? You see that vicar by the door? Bet you two bob he’ll be itching to ‘minister’ to me.” And he had been, of course. Betty knew these things.

Harry’d been good enough with them himself, too, so far. Mostly he got the men who didn’t shove it in you without warning, who didn’t make a fuss about paying. The romantic types were good, the ones who were thinking of someone else.

The muscular man in front of him seemed to be thinking of someone else, but not someone he liked. “Two guineas,” he said. “I’ll take you to my house. You can sleep there, too.”

If there was ever a time to depend on his instincts, Harry knew, it was when they were telling him to bugger right off, and quick. Two guineas was more money than he’d ever seen at once – it should be a bad sign. This probably was a wrong one. Had to be. And if he was, he’d be too big to escape easily. But Harry hadn’t eaten in two days. He’d slept in an alley the night before. And it was very late at night by now – no one else was likely to come along.

“Sure,” he said. He’d get too thin to be pretty, otherwise, and then what would he do? He could deal with it being rough.

The man took hold of his wrist too firmly, and helped him – nearly shoved him – into a cab. The address he gave, though, was one where two guineas might, Harry imagined, be easy to come by. They got off in front of a building that looked rather like he had imagined Buckingham Palace would, many of its lights still on.

The man knew just where he was going, but to Harry’s surprise and concern he rang the bell. Well, he speculated, maybe it was a party of some kind.

“Samuel?” said the slim man who answered the door. There was another man seated at a table behind him, smoking and looking over curiously. “Good Heavens. Do come in. I am glad to see you, but what brings you – who on earth is this?”

He had seen Harry. There was something very wrong here. Harry’s wrist was still in the first man’s grip, and wriggling only made him hold tighter.

“Your sort of birthday present, as I understand,” said the man holding Harry, and then he pulled out a knife. “I know what you’re like, and so will everyone else.”

*

Mr. Holmes was back at Scotland Yard, asking more of his infernal questions. Athelney Jones was the only man not busy with something more important, so he found himself talking to the stubborn young amateur about the Tarleton murders.

“It’s not my case, so of course I don’t know much about it,” he said, but the man clearly wanted someone to hear his own theories more than he wanted information. He did ask, in a break in his monologue, if they had found out anything else about the men’s associates.

“Who would have been able to enter the flat, for example? Someone must have, with either a key or an invitation.”

“I don’t think we can quite be clear on that yet, Mr. Holmes. Inspector Lestrade thinks it was the valet.” Lestrade, of course, was out inspecting something else entirely, and couldn’t answer his own consultant’s damned questions himself.

“Of course he does. The valet was seen by everyone from here to Surrey. He could only have done it if he can be in two places at once.”

“Well, that may be so. Personally I think the boy did it, for money.”

Holmes raised an eyebrow in his smug way and said, “And then strangled himself? A most difficult feat, I believe.”

“One of the two men strangled him then, maybe after the boy killed the other, and then stabbed himself. God knows what men like that will do.”

“That would be impossible, given the extent of the wounds. And surely it was clear that all the bodies were undressed and ... posed after death?”

“They were _moved_ after death, yes, but I don’t see how you can be sure of _undressed_.”

“The men were _stabbed_ ,” said Holmes with exasperation. “There was evidence of knife holes and blood in the remains of the burned clothing, and hardly any blood on their skin.” Jones regretted yet again whatever mad whim had possessed Lestrade to bring the man to the crime scene yesterday. It wasn’t his case, after all, and he didn’t need this theorist telling him about it.

“Well,” he said, “at least London is rid of three sodomites.”

“Rid of them?” said Holmes, frowning.

“Yes – we suspected both of those men, and even you must have noticed the boy was a Mary-Anne. The men spent their time at the house of a Mr. Michael Chambers, who calls himself an aesthete. That’s the toffs’ word for it. Their position together was compromising enough that surely even you realized it. No wonder they came to a bad end, since they must have associated with the worst people.”

“Two rich young men could not have had much in the way of relations with criminals.”

Jones shook his head. “You'll learn better,” he said. “They all move in the most foul company. Perversion is related to all the other vices, and excess in one area leads to it in another. No doubt some one of them has gone more mad than usual and slaughtered his fellows. I can't imagine why you'd be interested in this.”

“Hmm,” said Holmes. “Well, practice is practice, you know. I expect you can help me no further.”

Jones frowned as the man left. Why did he insist on sticking his nose in, anyway?

*

A new man.

There were always new men, of course. Some came once, and never again – perhaps shy, perhaps having already found what they were looking for, perhaps blackmailers. But Alex Corvus had come regularly, with no more introduction than Chambers saying, “Well, I met him at my club, and he’s persistent.”

His conversation was witty, his attitude, after his first only subtly awkward visit, comfortable and smooth, his gaze direct and apparently honest. He seemed like any other young man first discovering himself, though perhaps a little poorer and more reserved than most of Chambers’ friends.

Also, he had dark hair, so perfectly combed back as to make one’s fingers long to disorder it, eyes with the colour and intensity of storms, and a long slim form that called to mind Euripides’ Dionysus, beautiful and inhuman and seductive. Peter Richardson wanted him from the moment he first appeared.

And yet Corvus held them all at a distance – which did not fit, at all, with what he seemed to be. He effortlessly evaded advances, all the while seeming perfectly courteous. He drew them into revealing more of themselves than men like them should, sometimes through irritation but more often through persuasion (and he would be capable of being even more persuasive if he chose, Richardson thought). He was, surely, too young (and beautifully young) to be so devious. And no one had reported blackmail so far, nor was he choosing one person’s secrets to focus on.

He seemed, perhaps, frustrated, after several visits. At last, Richardson found him alone for a moment, gazing off into the air, and eased himself next to the man on the chaise longue.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

Corvus froze, not with a start or a gasp, only a sudden appearance of tension. Richardson would not have noticed it from any farther away.

“What man can answer that?” asked Corvus. “Are we not all stumbling blindly in this dark world, reaching out for meagre supports, with no idea of what we may find?”

“I spoke,” said Richardson, “not of the human condition, but of more personal matters.” If Corvus took it as a different sort of request, well, that would be one way of finding the man out, anyway.

Corvus glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. His face showed a moment of indecision.

He leaned sideways, his shoulder brushing against Peter's. “What person would I be looking for?” he asked, as if it was hypothetical. He still gazed off into space.

“Surely,” said Peter, “if I knew I would not have asked. But I did not say ‘whom.’ What do you want, Mr. Corvus?”

A turn, and the direct fierce stare of those eyes which seconds ago had seemed abstracted. Then at once the predatory aspect disappeared so utterly it must have been imagined. “But, of course,” he said, and surely Peter had imagined the threat, for now there was clear flirtation in his tone, “that depends on who is asking.” He smiled, slightly.

“And were I to ask?”

“Well.” His graceful hand shook slightly as he lit a cigarette. “In that case, I might want to go somewhere more private.”

*

Afterwards, Alex had dressed hastily, missing some of his usual grace, uncomfortable in Peter’s presence. Peter, in his dressing gown, followed him and escorted him to the door, where the man hesitated.

“It was – I – thank you,” he said. He bent his head the few inches that were necessary and kissed Peter, still very shy. Peter pulled him closer and kissed him properly.

“I’ll write you a sonnet,” he eventually whispered against the man’s pale, sculptural neck, kissing it as punctuation. “Not one. Dozens of them. Scores.”

Alex smiled. “I expect you always say that.”

Peter grinned back. “Usually. But I always keep my word. Sure you don’t want to stay the night? It is raining.”

“I – no, thank you. I must be going.” He pulled his hat from the stand and put it on.

“Family waiting up for you?”

“Ah – no.” He winced slightly.

“I’m sorry,” said Peter. “Are you not in touch with them, then?”

“Oh, no,” said Alex, “it isn’t that. But I live alone, and I doubt they would care, anyway.”

“You’re very lucky. It is difficult for most.”

“Indeed? How difficult?”

“Can you not guess?” asked Peter. “Shame, beatings, disowning – I have seen men who will not speak of their own fathers, and shake when the subject comes up.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alex, stopping with his overcoat in his hand. “I have upset you.”

Peter sighed. “It is only that James Tarleton’s death has made me think of it. His brother had been giving him trouble for years. God, poor Tarleton.”

Alex’s eyes lit up, and if he had been beautiful before he was brilliant as a star then. “I have been a fool,” he said. “I have been completely wasting my time. I beg your pardon, Richardson, please excuse me.” He dashed out the door without even a glance, let alone a kiss, and Peter leaned out after him to see him already halfway down the street, his overcoat a pair of wings for a moment as he hurriedly threw it around himself in the rain.

*

She had thought, only days ago, that nothing could touch her anymore, short of another death. Now she had found something far worse. Not Samuel’s death, not yet.

The dark young man who had followed the police in hesitated at the door.

“I am sorry for your loss, madam,” he said. The sounds of Samuel struggling against the officers holding him echoed down the hall behind him.

“Are you?” she asked, knowing exactly how sharp her tone was.

He paused, and she realized he was going to tell her the truth. “Yes. For your elder son’s death.”

She nodded in acknowledgement, her trained poise supporting her like a second corset. She found she could not reply.

“Good day, Lady Tarleton.”

“How long has he been mad?”

She had not meant to say it. Perhaps it was the sound of the title, the now-dying title, that had done it.

“I do not know,” said Mr. Sherlock Holmes. “But even I did not see it at first. You could not have, madam. I wish you well. Good afternoon.”

*

Richardson stared at the card in his hand for a moment, and then the man himself was in the room. Richardson looked up, startled, then dismissed his equally surprised butler.

“I thought,” Alex Corvus said hesitantly, “that I ought to apologize for my abrupt departure.”

Richardson had thought the man was the equal of any situation, but here he seemed at a loss. “Certainly I shall forgive you,” Peter said, standing and moving to place a hand on his shoulder, but the man flinched back.

“That’s what you meant by wasting your time, then,” said Richardson.

“No – I did not mean with you,” said Corvus nervously. “Only that I was mistaken in – something else.”

“I know,” said Richardson. “Samuel Tarleton was arrested yesterday for his elder brother’s murder.”

“He was,” said Corvus.

Richardson tried to remember a conversation with this man that hadn’t felt like a fencing match. Time to aim for the heart, then. “That’s why you were with us in the first place, isn’t it?”

Corvus might have bitten his lip. “I was mistaken, as I said.”

“And what will you do with the knowledge you have from your mistake?” This did not make sense. He couldn’t possibly be from Scotland Yard, and he’d opened himself to the same accusations he might make against anyone else. But he was not acting like he had discovered a new side to himself.

“Nothing,” said Corvus. “I give you my word of honour, and I am at least a gentleman in that. I shall not be the ruin of any man who has not harmed another, I swear it. I am my own man, and only investigate things I find interesting.”

He was so young, and so earnest in his principles. Richardson fought a smile.

“You were very helpful,” said Corvus. “Thank you.”

“Helpful,” said Richardson drily. Then he considered the man. “You knew nothing about the life, did you?”

It was hard to tell, but Corvus might be blushing. “No,” he said.

“Would you like to know more?”

“Well,” said Corvus. “Yes. But not in the sense you mean.”

He could not understand this man. Richardson ran a hand through his hair.

“I have more sense than to tell the secrets of men I know and like to an utter stranger.”

Corvus didn’t make the obvious objection, which Richardson respected him for.

“I’ll see you around, I expect,” said Richardson. “Good afternoon, Corvus.”

“Good afternoon.”

*

The upstairs lodger started up on his dratted violin again, and Mrs. Norbert banged on the ceiling with her cane.


End file.
